The FSBO claims are deeply misleading in a number of respects, but one in particular bears highlighting.

According to the FSBO article:

According to NAR, the median sale price of agent-assisted home sales in 2013 was $230,000, while ForSaleByOwner.com’s average sale price was nearly $20k more. Imagine what you could do with all that extra money in your pocket.

Here’s the source of that $230K figure from the NAR report:

The typical FSBO home sold for $184,000 compared to $230,000 among agent-assisted home sales.

Who’s telling the truth? It’s possible that both are – FSBO homes in general sell for $46K less than agent-assisted sales while those listed on the FSBO site sell for $20K more.

I’m inclined to suspect that the FSBO site doesn’t have actual sale prices, and conflated list prices on its site with sale prices. Whatever the case may be, selectively quoting the NAR data doesn’t inspire confidence.

COMMENTS

Joe, we agree with you that both could be true. The NAR data includes transactions where the buyer and seller know each other. The ForSaleByOwner.com data only includes data reported to us by successful sellers on our site. On average, ForSaleByOwner.com customers’ final selling price is nearly $20k more than the agent-assisted average reported by NAR. Those sellers also report getting 97% of their asking price, which is in line with what NAR reported for agent assisted sellers.